My Pen-Pal Voldemort
by PencilMonkeyGaiden
Summary: Ascending to claim his rightful place as the cruelest, wickedest Dark wizard in Britain had been, as the Muggles say, easy-peasy. Clawing his way to the top of Brockton Bay's seedy underbelly might finally prove a challenge worthy of Lord Voldemort... But why, oh why, do his most vexing adversaries always turn out to be reckless children with unstylish glasses?
1. Glossary 11

**My Pen-Pal Voldemort**

Summary:  
Ascending to claim his rightful place as the cruelest, wickedest Dark wizard in Britain had been, as the Muggles say, easy-peasy. Clawing his way to the top of Brockton Bay's seedy underbelly might finally prove a challenge worthy of Lord Voldemort... But why, oh why, do his most vexing adversaries always turn out to be reckless children with unstylish glasses?

 **Glossary 1.1**

Emma, please don't set fire to the gophers with your toenail-lasers. The poor things haven't done anything to you.

"...Mione, this plan just seems... Too easy, someho..."

Oh, there goes the whole gopher village, up in flames. What about King Arpher and the Gopher Knights of the Round? From now on, they're gonna have to start jousting on foot, Emma. On _foot_. You _monster_.

"...Best solutions usually... Less you want to try to use the Ki..."

I gradually drifted from a restless slumber to a half-awake state, when the sound of whispering voices intruded on my dreams. Grmnf. Go 'way, voices. All your disemembebodied murmuring is ruining a perfectly good nightmare, y'know.

"...Would have expected you to warn us not to... Risks of mucking about with the Veil of De..."

"...Sperate times call for desperate meas..."

I levered the pillow off of my head. Clearly, my strategy of hiding under the covers wasn't going to stop the damn intrusive night-time conversationalists - just muffle them slightly. Maybe I should put a sign on my door? Something along the lines of: "TAYLOR HEBERT'S ROOM - NOISY INSOMNIAC MUMBLERS KEEP OUT". Honestly, couldn't they ta-

...Wait. Waaait a frick-frack paddywhackin' minute. I forced one of my eyes open. It didn't make much difference - my bedroom was mostly dark, with just a sliver of moonlight entering through the gap between the window drapes. But there was something... Something important about the voices, some annoying little detail that was nagging at my sleep-addled mind...

There was a heavy thump, followed by a metallic tinkling noise, and then the rapid _gadush-gadush-gadush_ of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, as a spike of adrenaline kicked my body into high alert.

I sat bolt upright in my bed, staring blindly around my room.

As an afterthought, I fumbled for my glasses; a long few seconds of clumsy searching eventually yielded results, when I managed to locate my glasses, and get them pushed on my face in roughly the right position. My frantic scrambling had also knocked over my alarm clock, but I really didn't have time to worry about clocks, right now.

I didn't have to time to groan at my own unintentional puns, either, so that one would have to pass unlamented.

There were no hints of movement, no strange shapes lurking in the darkness that were roughly the same size and shape as a person. Nothing seemed to be amiss, from what little I could see in the gloom. This reassured me not at all.

Those mumbling voices probably hadn't been part of my dreams; they hadn't sounded like Emma, or Sophia, or anyone familiar at all. And the other noises - the thump, and the metallic tinkling; most likely sounds of things hitting the floor - had _definitely_ not come from my subconscious. Which meant that there was _somebody in my room_ , _right now_ , in the _middle of the night_ , and they were-

 _Flutter, flutter, flumph_.

...Tossing notebooks at me? What the...? That had almost certainly been the sound of paper, like a thin booklet of some sort, dropping to the ground. Had I gotten a visit from some kind of reverse burglar? Could the teachers at Winslow possibly have stooped so low that they'd started breaking into random teenagers' bedrooms under cover of night, so they could dump piles of surprise homework on the heads of unsuspecting victims?

I knew that at least half the student body were gang members, or aspiring to join one of the local criminal organizations, but the situation was getting dangerously out of hand, if even the teachers had begun assigning our required reading by means of B&E.

 _PLINGGG, kling, pik-pik-prrring_.

Okay, that one wasn't paper. Something metallic, maybe? If my unseen assailant was aiming at me, they were doing a terrible job. It sounded like all the whatever-they-were, the things that had landed on my floor, had... Well, landed on my _floor_ , and not on _me_. None of the invisible missiles had even hit my bed.

"...You sure this is gonna work? He might..."

I kept as still as I could, straining my ears and holding my breath. The voices were whispering again - that might let me work out where they were coming from, and where the burglar-teachers were hiding. At least, I might pick up a clue as to why they were here in the first place.

"...Even if this isn't a gateway to the afterli... End up someplace so bleak and dismal, so utterly... _Bereft of hope_ , that no-one has ever... Back from there alive..."

I frowned. It was difficult to make out where the voices were coming from, but the things they were saying... That was just _rude_. My bedroom wasn't _that_ bad. I'd tidied up only last week - and besides, I wasn't the one chucking random bric-a-brac into strange people's very-nearly-clean bedrooms!

Unless they meant Brockton Bay, or perhaps Earth Bet in general, in which case... Yeah, "bleak and dismal" was likely an accurate description. Still kinda rude, though.

The tone of their voices didn't really match what I'd expect from hardened criminals - or from a roving pack of sadistic teenagers playing a prank, for that matter. Okay, sure, they sounded young - possibly my age, or a little older - but the urgency in their hushed whispers didn't strike me as the kind of tension you heard in the voices of teenage yahoos, sniggering like idiots, who'd worked themselves up with excitement over their latest brilliant idea for making other people miserable, eager to pull off their stunt so they could slink away and laugh about it... And yeah, let's just say that I had plenty of personal experience with bullying. I knew what they sounded like.

These whispers had a different kind of anxiousness to them - the sort you heard from characters in a slasher movie, when they were frantically arguing how to escape from their secluded cottage in the middle of the wilderness, without being hacked in half by the serial killer with the blood-stained machete, who was stalking them from the shadows.

On second thought - just because the unseen whisperers _might_ not be professional criminals - or worse, amateur teenage bullies - that didn't mean I should get too relaxed.

Hesitantly, I climbed out of bed and rose to my feet, and hissed out a muted: "...Hello?"

No response.

"Who's there?" I whispered. "A-are you on the run from somebody? A gang? T-the police? A villainous cape? ...A bloodthirsty madman in a hockey mask and armed with a large farming implement?"

When the silence had stretched out for an eternity - probably only eight or nine seconds, if you asked the rest of the universe, but it _felt_ like a lot longer; besides, my alarm clock had been the first to bite the dust - I took a cautious step forward, hands flailing in front of me to search for hidden obstacles.

Firstly, the reason that I hadn't been struck by any of the thrown debris, was that they'd all landed in the middle of the floor.

Secondly, that I was now standing, albeit slightly wobbly, in the middle of the floor.

My legs turned quite a bit more wobbly, when a rather heavy and distressingly _solid_ object bonked me on the head.


	2. Glossary 12

**Glossary 1.2**

In the beginning was the word, and the word was: "OOOoohhfffuuuOOoazzat?"

Technically, that's what the professional language-wranglers call "onomatopoeia", or in layman's terms: A sad, pitiful moan, put down in writing, but don't bother trying to put it down in Scrabble tiles, because nobody's going to let you score the points for a twenty-one letter word with two Zs and zero etymology.

Clutching my head, hissing in agony, I regained consciousness and promptly wished I hadn't. I clenched my eyes shut against the light of what was probably early dawn, spilling through the window. My pained groan changed to a perplexed and questioning noise - specifically, an "-OOoazzat?" noise - when a glint of metal caught my eye.

I hadn't played princess in years, so... Why was there a crown on my bedroom floor?

Ooh, no. Not a crown. A _tiara_. And so _shiny_.

Come to think of it, wouldn't it be fun to play pretend again, just for a minute? I could strike a heroic pose, like Glory Girl! Added bonus: The metal tiara was probably nice and cool - just the thing to soothe that throbbing goose-egg that had sprouted on my scalp.

If I was Glory Girl, then perhaps Emma would want to b-

Emma!

I juddered to a halt, halfway risen from my mattress and tangled covers - thankfully, I must have toppled over backwards and landed on my bed, when I got hit on the head, last night. Now, I was frozen in place, one arm outstretched to reach for the tiara. Memories of last night filtered through my mind - the furtive whispering burglar-teachers, the barrage of falling objects, getting hit on the head - along with memories of Emma, her betrayal, and what she'd done to me, and to the memory of our friendship, since we started Winslow. Her, and Sophia, and Madison, and all their cronies and hangers-on.

It would have been nice to get an ice pack for the bump on my head. Instead, I had to settle for the icy fingers of dread running down my spine. That tiara hadn't wandered in here on its own - it must have been one of the things I'd heard get dumped on my floor, last night.

The whispering voices hadn't been ones I recognized, nor did they sound like bullies plotting a new, mean prank... But that didn't prove anything. Emma and Sophia had no shortage of minions, after all.

They'd done some pretty despicable things to me, so far, and gotten away with it. They'd also demonstrated that they were willing and able to break into my locker... The real question, then, was this: Would Sophia and Emma be prepared to stoop even lower? Could they have broken into my home, last night, and planted the tiara? They might have stolen it, or perhaps Emma had stumbled on a treasure trove of Barnes family heirlooms in her mother's jewelry box... Then, the police would get an anonymous tip-off, a couple of cops would show up on our doorstep with a search warrant, they'd rummage around in my room and, lo and behold, they'd find the loot. Hello, juvenile detention.

Dad would probably try to get his good friend, Alan Barnes the hot-shot attorney, to help with my legal defense. Was that part of Emma's plan, as well? Was her dad going to sabotage my day in court?

I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat, and stared at the tiara. It seemed so pure and innocent, gleaming in the light of dawn, with all its silver filigree and sparkling ultramarine gemstones - sapphires, most likely. In short, it looked _very_ expensive.

Hang on... That plan relied on timing - the tiara wasn't hidden, so Emma must realize that I'd have plenty of opportunities to move it, unless-

...Oh, crap! The cops must already be on their way! I had to hide it, somehow!

I lurched from my bed in a frantic burst of motion, struggling to get on my feet and grab the tiara, so I could-

"...Urp!"

With a startled yelp, I tumbled to the floor as my feet shot out from under me. I glared at the slippery, treacherous snake-in-the-grass that'd tripped me up. " _Et tu_ , notebook?"

"...Taylor? Are you okay?" Dad's muffled voice called out from outside my room. "What's going on, in there?"

I winced. "Um... Yeah, I'm fine, Dad!" I hollered back in response. "Nothing's wrong, I just, uh..."

Grabbing the notebook that had made me trip, I crumpled it up as best I could with my fists, then hurled it in the general direction of my bed. "...Just slipped on something."

I waited a moment for Dad to go back to his morning routine - I'd really rather not have to explain this whole mess. Plus, my aching skull wasn't happy about colliding with yet another blunt object - the floor, this time - and was making its displeasure known in no uncertain terms.

By the time I deemed it safe to continue scurrying about without risk of discovery, or nauseous vomiting, I'd had another important realization:

Fingerprints were a thing, and so were Tinkers. Even if I only handled the tiara in such a way that the police wouldn't be able to find complete prints, I might still leave DNA evidence - residue of skin flakes, or whatever. Heck, if Emma was really determined to frame me for a crime and get me tossed in jail, she might be able to get her lawyer of a father to pull some strings, and get the PRT involved, one way or another. Armsmaster was one of the greatest Tinkers in the country, so he could probably cobble together a... A biorhythmic resonance frequency sensor, or some such doohick-a-ma-tron.

All in all, it was vitally important that I didn't make direct contact with the possibly-stolen jewelry. I had some vague notion of finding a way to hand it over to the police, anonymously, so they could return it to its rightful owner - unfortunately, that sense of morality could come back and bite me in the butt, if I left any whatchamacallit, forensic evidence on the tiara that could tie it back to me.

Maybe. Possibly. I dunno, I'm not sure if I was thinking straight, at that point in time.

Cautiously staggering upright, I shuffled across my room to the closet. I watched my step with considerably more care and attention than usual, checking the floor for unseen obstacles ahead of me before venturing forth - I was currently two for two in the standing-up-and-immediately-falling-over sweepstakes, and had zero desire in continuing my perfect unlucky streak.

Reaching my closet without adding any fresh bruises to my growing collection, I quickly rummaged through the contents.

There! An old t-shirt I hadn't worn in months, but it was clean and laundered, and thus (hopefully) unlikely to contain much in the way of useful DNA that might contaminate the evidence. The shirt was part of a fashion collection made by a local cape - unfortunately, her Pariananas line of clothing had never really caught on, since people thought it was too confusing that the outfits had pictures of pineapples, when the name clearly rhymed with "bananas".

The shirt had been a present from Emma, back when we were still friends. I'd stopped wearing it, because it reminded me of her. There was probably some sort of irony in this situation, using a gift from the old Emma to foil one of new-Emma's evil schemes... But right now, I cared less about irony than I did about getting myself an iron-clad legal defense. Heck, I'd even settle for tinfoil-clad.

Carefully, I scooped up the tiara from the floor, using the discarded shirt as an intervening layer to avoid letting my bare skin touch it. I wrapped the tiara in the Pariananas shirt, starting to tie it in a neat little bundle...

Huh. Those glistening sapphires looked very pretty against the bright orange pineapple print on the shirt... I wonder what it would look like, wearing both at the same ti-

Nope! Stop it, Taylor. Ix-nay on ogling the shiny idence-evay.

Before I could succumb to my newfound magpie-like temptations of wanting to admire sparklies up close, I tied the bundle closed with a bit more force than necessary. I put it down next to the door - I'd find a better hiding place for it momentarily. It was probably just my overactive imagination, but my fingers tingled when I let go of the bundle, like the guilt of handling stolen goods had burned my hands.

Shaking my head, I did a quick check of my room, especially the floor. My heart sank when I discovered that my hunch had been correct - the tiara wasn't the only piece of almost-certainly ill-gotten jewelry that Emma and Sophia had planted in my room.


	3. Glossary 13

**Glossary 1.3**

Under my desk, I found a necklace with an oval pendant, embossed with a large S, plus extra curlicues. At the foot of my bed, half-buried in the tangled covers, was an ornate gold cup, or possibly a small goblet. I cursed under my breath, and gingerly rubbed the lump on my head - that fancy drinking utensil on my bed was probably the culprit responsible for knocking me unconscious, last night... Which meant I had to clean it, somehow, to get rid of traces of hair and blood.

This pretty much proved that Sophia and Emma must have robbed some stranger, to frame me for it. The tiara had looked classy and elegant, and could have belonged to Emma's mother, but these two additions looked far too big and clunky - more like something that belonged in a museum, as part of an exhibit on Medieval Europe, or the Renaissance.

One more scavenging trip through my wardrobe yielded another couple of old shirts. I probably could have wrapped up the cup and the necklace in a single bundle, but I preferred keeping them separate, since I knew the gobletty thing would need a good scrub, and maybe a dunking in bleach to be on the safe side.

Thankfully, it was Saturday, which meant I didn't have to worry about school. By the time I'd finished my improvised crime scene clean-up, Dad had left to go work unpaid overtime, struggling to keep the Dockworkers' Association afloat. Normally, that might have made me worry for his health, but today, it suited me just fine - it bought me time and privacy to hide the evidence.

After some thought, and a fair amount of anxious nail-biting, I decided to stash the bundles in the basement. There was a concealed cubbyhole behind a panel that I'd never shown Emma. The police might think to look there, but at least she couldn't tip them off about it.

For good measure, I almost dragged over some cardboard boxes full of books and things that had belonged to Mom, back when she was alive. In the end, I decided against concealing the hiding space with boxes, since I might need to be able to get hold of the bundles quickly, in an emergency. Also, the basement was a bit dusty and rich in cobwebs - not all that messy, but enough that a careful observer might notice the disturbance in the dust if the boxes were moved, and get suspicious.

Was I over-thinking things? Or _under_ -thinking things, maybe? Hard to tell, when I didn't have any prior experience in criminal activities.

Once I was back upstairs in my room, I drew a long, shuddering breath. My heart was still hammering in my chest from all the excitement. Plonking my aching body down in my chair, I tried to calm down, breathing slowly in, and out. Through half-lidded eyes, I gazed blankly down at my desk, not really focused on anything.

When I realized what I was seeing, my heartbeat revved right back up to frightened-Energizer-bunny rates, again.

In the middle of my desk, amongst unfinished homework and various odds and ends, lay a notebook. Plain black covers, aggressively nondescript, no distinguishing marks whatsoever. Staring at it intently, I could find no sign that it had recently been crumpled into a somewhat compressed, crushed-up wad of paper, and then tossed across the room. It looked undamaged, unblemished, and unnerving... Because I was at least ninety percent certain that this was the notebook I'd trodden on, earlier. The notebook that had made me slip and fall, and which-

...The floor. I'd found the notebook on the _floor_. Where all the spontaneous appearances of tiaras and necklaces had occurred, last night.

Last night, when I heard all the metal junk clattering on my floor... Hadn't there been a flutter of falling paper, as well?

Slowly, keeping a wary eye out for more surprises, I got up from the chair and searched the room, one more time.

As it turned out, my window was still closed, and couldn't have been closed that way from the outside. Unless a Parahuman was involved, in which case anything was possible.

The intruders could have entered through the door, instead, but at least I didn't find any trespassers still lurking in my room - or in the rest of the house, for that matter. No sign of forced entry, anywhere that I could see.

None of the other notebooks in my room were similar enough to the weird black one that I could have gotten them mixed up. Either an invisible interloper had snuck into my room, while I was busy hiding stolen jewelry in the basement, and replaced the crumpled notebook with an identical, un-crumpled duplicate... Or the notebook had, somehow, restored itself to a pristine condition while my back was turned.

Mind awhirl with thoughts and suspicions, I slowly headed back to my room, with one or two detours along the way.

Time, it seemed, for a bit of scientific self-study.

Frowning down at the eerily normal-seeming black book, I drummed my fingers on the desk. It sounded a little off, more _plap-plap-plap_ than _tap-tap-tap_. While I searched the house for reverse-burglars, I'd picked up a pair of rubber gloves from the cleaning supplies. Taking a deep breath, I picked up the book. It completely failed to bite me, or sting me, or transform into a violent motorcycle from Mars and run me over.

Huh.

Still, I felt a little apprehensive when I flipped through the notebook. Hmm... Either it was brand new, or the writing that may have been inside it had vanished when it... Reset itself, after I smushed it up. Nothing but blank pages, from cover to... Hang on, there was an inscription at the front. Seems like this was the private property of one "T.M.R.", whoever that was. So, not Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, or Madison Clements, at least.

What was the point of dumping this in my room? They'd already cluttered my floor with a heavy gold beaker, a garish pimp necklace, and a sapphire-studded piece of silver headgear... Wasn't that incriminating enough? Surely, they couldn't get me in any more trouble by planting a stolen, unused notebook in my room?

...Unless the notebook was, for instance, made of a highly valuable prototype self-repairing paper. Could this be the property of a new Parahuman? Some sort of paper-based Tinker, perhaps?

I'd heard that Armsmaster had used memory-materials when he built parts of his armor and his bike - special metal alloys that "remembered" their original shape, which made it much easier to mend the devices when - for example - Lung tried to rip the Protectorate hero in half, or Hookwolf made a serious effort to impale him, or what have you. Surely, other Tinkers could make something similar.

Or, perhaps, this mysterious bookbinder-Tinker could turn out to be a villain. Had Emma and Sophia encountered a new cape, and recruited them to help with the break-in? And done... What, exactly? Folded a paper airplane - one which could be remote-controlled with an origami joystick, I'm sure - and used it to airlift stolen valuables into my bedroom? Could Tinker-made paper airplanes suffer engine failure? Did it crash-land and revert to notebook form? If that was the case, why hadn't they bothered to retrieve the device? For that matter, how the heck had they gotten it through the closed window?

Doodling in the notebook with a sharpie confirmed that, yes, it functioned like normal paper, at least in that regard. Crude stick figures were crude and figure-y. A simple game of solitaire tic-tac-toe caused me to attain the quantum indeterminate state of being both the winner and the loser, at the same time; this was not a result of an advanced Tinker-tech device breaking the laws of physics, but just a natural byproduct of shoehorning a two-player game into solitaire mode.

Idly, I scrawled out the words: "WHO ARE THE MUMBLE-CHORUS?" in large block letters. Those whispering voices I'd heard in the night must be a clue, I was sure of it. If I could just remember what they'd said, that might-

I stared at the notebook, as the black ink vanished from the page, quickly returning it to clean, pristine featurelessness. It was like watching a TV commercial advertising a new, improved type of diaper, or feminine hygiene products. Only, instead of the blue liquid that marketing companies wanted to believe was the only thing that leaked from babies and menstruating women, it was the aforementioned black ink that now faded into the white paper. My scribbles were absorbed so completely that within a few seconds, not a single trace of my stick figure doodles could be found on the crisp, white paper.

Before I had time to process this, new writing appeared on the page.

It was not in my handwriting. These were not the words I had written, moments before.

Clenching the notebook tightly with both hands, I stared at the new sentences that bloomed on the page, feeling the metaphorical rabbit hole yawning open beneath my feet.

 **"Mumble-Chorus"? Did the Professor give himself a new nickname?**

 **Either way, I am not Albus Dumbledore.**

 **My name is Tom. Who are you?**

…...

 **A/N:**

Regarding the point (brought up by quite a lot of people) that Sirius Black might have been chucked through to Earth Bet, too, and become Myrddin... I'll admit, that wasn't (and still isn't) intended to be a plot point in this story. Still, if so many people are interested in that idea, I might write an omake or similar short story about Myrddfoot. (Sirddin Black?)

 **Someguy the anon:** GopherHouse Nine, next?

 **Lyzafae:** Rowling may or may not have come up with unique powers for the other Horcruxes, after she gave up on writing books - if so, I doubt I'll include them. However, another fanfic introduced a rather fitting power for Hufflepuff's cup, which I probably _will_ be using in this story. (Taylor might be more interested in the Resurrection Stone, though... Chance to get closure for the loss of her mother, perhaps?)

 **Apperatus:** Then the title has done its job.

 **Lyzafae:** The Diary may or may not be indescribable, but since it absorbs the ink when people write on its pages, it is certainly un-inscribable. :-P

 **Grubleafeater** , **Radon86:** Likely depends on whether you use "Contessa'd" in the sense of "flawlessly assassinated in the night", or "subjected to a hyper-effective recruitment drive".


	4. Glossary 14

**My Pen-Pal Voldemort**

 **Glossary 1*4**

While I waited for the blazing inferno that currently surrounded Tom to die down, I passed the time by turning off the alarm on the smoke detector. I breathed a sigh of relief when the loud bleeping noise finally ceased. Then, I coughed from the mouthful of fumes I'd inhaled.

In hindsight, I probably should have thought of switching the alarm off sooner - preferably at some point _before_ I tossed a lit match in a plugged-up kitchen sink filled with rubbing alcohol and lighter fluid, not to mention the _really_ exciting ingredients - but hindsight could go around bragging about being 20/20 all it liked. Some of us wore glasses, and were proud of it.

(Technically, glasses plus safety goggles, at the moment. That was just common sense, when you were immolating unexpected visitors in the name of science.)

Soon, the flames guttered out, having exhausted their supply of available fuel. I opened the faucet, and then opened a window. While the smoke slowly wafted out of the kitchen - the raging bonfire hadn't produced much, since the majority of the fuel mixture had been specifically selected for being A) unlikely to produce smoke or make a mess, and B) readily available in the house on short notice - the sink filled with water. Once there was a couple of inches worth of water covering the bottom of the sink, I unplugged the drain and let the flow of water sluice out the mess that my experiment had made. Turning off the tap, I picked up the thoroughly-extinguished notebook in one rubber-gloved hand, and examined it closely.

I used another piece of paper to jot down my observations. These notes were on loose-leaf paper. I'd edit and encode them later, before transcribing them into a different, wholly mundane and non-sentient notebook. Then, I'd destroy the unencrypted loose-leaf notes.

Based on my interactions with him so far, chances were that I'd probably feel the urge to set Tom on fire again, at some point, so I might as well save time and burn the extraneous notes, while I was at it.

On reflection, all this rigmarole might seem a little paranoid, but good information security was probably a useful habit to develop, when people started popping into your bedroom in the middle of the night to dump crazy, snarky notebooks on your floor.

I opened the notebook, studied the contents, and then added a few more observations to my temporary loose-leaf logbook:

 _CREMATION EXPERIMENT #3_

 _Prior to incineration, multiple pages were subjected to: Being crumpled up, folded, having corners dog-eared. None of these treatments appear to hinder recovery._

 _Notebook was completely engulfed in flame for 58 seconds, measured by the clock on the kitchen wall. After the flames were extinguished, the notebook appears unburned, although it has retained a slight smell of the propellants used._

 _Notebook is also wet from having been doused with tap water to eliminate risk of setting house on fire. Pages do not appear stained or water-logged._

 _When the experimenter turned her back on the notebook to write down her preliminary observations, notebook recovered fully while it was not being watched. Notebook now appears completely dry. Odor has faded to the point of being undetectable by smell._

 _Matches stuck between pages of notebook, prior to immolation, have been burned in a seemingly normal fashion, and were neither protected from the flames by the notebook, nor consumed or absorbed by the notebook. Burnt matches appear blackened, but dry. Notebook unaffected by the addition of matches._

 _Definite Brute power. Will need to consult PHO and/or PRT website to work out estimate of rating._

Putting down the sheet of paper, I opened the notebook again. Since I didn't have any weapons I could load or prepare, I settled for clicking my ballpoint pen a couple of times. The sound wasn't as reassuring as the _ka-chack_ of an action movie protagonist readying their shotgun, but it would have to do.

Bracing myself, I wrote in the notebook:

 _How do you feel, Tom?_

A few seconds later, my handwritten message was slurped into the page, and a reply bubbled up to the surface of the paper from its milky-white depths. (I kept my notes free from gothic poetry and lyrical excesses, but I couldn't resist the urge to squee and babble in the privacy of my own mind, whenever I saw _real live Parahuman powers at work_ , right here in my hands! ...Okay so it was a shitty power, but a power nonetheless. Tom called it "magic", and Arthur C. Clarke might have agreed with him - this magic was, indeed, indistinguishable from some of the advanced technology in the world, since his enchanted notebook was performing many of the same tricks that a computer or a cell phone might do... A sturdy brick phone, at least, that wasn't fazed by minor obstacles like incineration.)

Shaking my head to clear it of my musings, I focused on Tom's reply:

 **Oh, I'm just dandy, no thanks to you.**

 **What do you have planned for your next little "experiment", if I may be so bold as to ask? Will you, perchance, douse me in petrol and then set me on fire?**

 _You're in the U.S. of A., Tom. It's pronounced "gasoline"._

 **...I'll take that as a: 'No, not until we get a fresh delivery of the stuff on Monday', then.**

 **Hmm... Do you intend to start writing 'Incandis' on my poor, much-abused pages, over and over again, until I am verily ablaze with Fiendfyre?**

 _Pfft, nah. You're not gonna trick me into giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome THAT easily._

 _Wait, hang on._

 _Would that WORK?! Could I do that voodoo you do, just by writing the "magic incantations"?_

 **No. You could not.**

 **Nevertheless, please try. I'm sure your futile efforts will provide no end of amusement, and we books only have as much fun as is written in us.**

 _Meanie! :-P_

 **...Your punctuation is baffling.**

Giggling at Tom's stiff-upper-lippy Briticisms, I took a break from our subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) mutual game of attempting to trick the other into divulging more information than they'd intended.

A peek in the sink revealed that it was still a little cluttered from my testing; I made a mental note - and, just to be on the safe side, a literal note at the top of my page of experimental observations - to make sure that I cleaned it up before Dad got home.

I fetched a clean glass and filled it from the faucet, and then retook my seat at the kitchen table. The first mouthful was refreshing. The second lasted longer, as I swirled it around contemplatively in my cheeks before swallowing.

Taking smaller sips of my water, I picked up the pen and resumed the written conversation.

 _I say, here's a thought, old chap..._

 **You're drinking a sugary carbonated beverage with your pinky finger raised, again, aren't you?**

Blushing, I grimaced at the notebook, and promptly wrapped my pinky around the glass. After a second's thought, I put the glass down on the table.

 _No, of course not. That's ridiculous. Don't be ridiculous._

That wasn't even a lie - tap water wasn't sugary, nor particularly carbonated. Nyeh, so there.

 _Anyway, don't change the subject._

 _Sooo... If you're a "wizard", and you went to a special magical school for magically magic witches and wizards..._

 **Hark! Is that a hint of sarcasm and doubt I hear?**

 _...Does that mean you rode to school on enchanted flying broomsticks?_

Tom launched into one of his snarky lectures on wizardly boarding schools, and how the "boarding" part tended to cut down on the commute.

Also, magic trains? Really?

He seemed kinda underwhelmed by his fellow spell-slingers' favorite national pastime, "Quidditch", but at least his descriptions of the sport answered my question.

 _Right. Magic flying broomsticks are definitely a thing._

 _Heeey, Tom? YOU happen to be an enchanted object, too, right?_

 **I would greatly appreciate it if you did not hurl me out of an upstairs window. Again.**

 _Hey, the first time doesn't count! You forgot to flap your pages like wings, like I told you to!_

 _Obviously, you have to flap before you can fly._

 **Of course. How silly of me to think otherwise.**

 _Why are you so bothered by the thought of my flying lessons, anyway? Can you feel pain caused by falling damage?_

Feeling an eager grin spread on my face, I pulled the loose-leaf paper closer and prepared to add another note. More data for my studies!

 **No, but it is terribly undignified.**

I snorted and shook my head, but jotted down a note, anyway. I set the sheet of paper aside, and returned to my scribbled conversation with Tom.

 _Just think how cool it would be if you could fly!_

 _People on the street would look up at you as you swoop past, and gasp in awe! Also, they'd make admiring noises, and ask each other:_

 _Is it an origami swan? Is it a paper airplane? No! It's... Super-Book!_

 **Ha! Alas, I'm afraid I don't even have eyeballs at the moment, let alone ones capable of shooting red laser beams.**

 **Tell you what, though; if I ever get the opportunity to gain a new pair of eyes, I'll make sure they're a nice, bright red, just for you.**

 **They'll match my heroic costume, although - fair warning - I draw the line at wearing my pants on the outside of my trousers.**

I smiled at Tom's reply, while adding a note to my observations that, while Tom seemed to be wholly unaware of the existence of Parahumans - or, more likely, he was very persistent in feigning ignorance, to keep up his pretense of being a wizardastic magickinator, rather than a cape - he was at least passingly familiar with comic book capes from the early 20th century.

I leaned back in my chair, tapping the end of the ballpoint pen against my pursed lips, as I contemplated the notebook. I wasn't sure why I felt so comfortable chatting with Tom, even though, on a rational level, I trusted him about as far as... Correction, _far less_ than I could throw him.

Heck, even if he hadn't been communicating with me via the medium of an indestructible, pseudo-living _notebook_ , much of his behavior reminded me of Emma. I might not even have picked up on the glossy, sophisticated exterior that Tom hid behind, if I hadn't been forced into a front row seat to Emma's own duplicity. Tom used a different approach than Emma did - where she preferred the "innocent pretty girl" routine, Tom aimed for "suave and debonair scion of the British upper class" - and he was probably even more skilled at it than my former best friend.

Bottom line: There was something fake about Tom. Fake, and quite possibly rotten.

Maybe I was less inclined to dislike him because he was, for all intents and purposes, a sentient book? I'd always had an easier time dealing with people when they were fictional, rather than flesh and blood.

For all that he claimed to be a sorcerer, I still thought it more likely that Tom was a Case 53. From what I knew about this type of Parahuman, and what little research I'd had time to do into the subject, Case 53s were generally characterized by an inhuman appearance, and memory loss. Perhaps Tom's delusions of wizardliness qualified?

Although, there was a famous hero, Myrddin, who apparently believed himself to be a wizard, too, and I was pretty sure that he wasn't a Case 53. Either way, a sentient notebook certainly counted as "inhuman".

Well, the Case 53 theory wasn't the only possibility; there was also a chance that Tom's book was an odd piece of Tinker-tech, allowing the real "Tom" to communicate with me over long distances. My main reason for discounting this idea as less likely than the Case 53 hypothesis, was the lack of motive. Why would some mysterious Tinker go to all this time and effort - creating a (so far) indestructible notebook and use it to have long conversations with me, answering my questions (well, most of them) and letting me do dangerous tests on their Tinker-notebook? I wasn't anybody special. There was nothing to gain from spying on me, or tricking me into revealing valuable secrets - I didn't have anything worth stealing. Neither did Dad, as far as I knew.

Still, I was being careful about what I shared with Tom. For example, I hadn't told him anything about the tiara, necklace and gold cup.

By this point in my introspection, the ballpoint pen had somehow ended up wedged between my upper lip and my nose, letting me waggle it like a fake mustache. I relaxed my facial muscles, dropping the pen into my hand.

 _Yo yo, Tom-inator!_

 _You thirsty, dawg?_

I cackled out loud when I saw a long, slightly wavy line appear on the page, like a dark slash of ink that slowly vanished again. I'd surmised, based on context, that this was Tom's way of expressing annoyed exasperation; a possibly-involuntary method of sighing that didn't require him to do anything so uncouth as actually writing the word: "Sigh!"

 **I am, as you may have noticed, a diary. Paper feels neither thirst nor hunger, in the way you think of those urges.**

Hmm... Why did I feel a shiver at that comment?

 **Hence, I assume that what you're really asking, is: 'How would you like to be volunteered for another taste-testing experiment, Tom?'**

 _...Maaaybe?_

 **I already told you: Bleach and drain cleaner are acceptable, but I don't much care for the flavour of your weed killer. That particular plonk is unpleasantly sweet.**

 _Y'know, "flavor" ain't a word that most people would use when describing toxic household chemicals. Odor, maybe, but not flavor._

 _Also, single-ingredient tipples are SO last half-hour. You know what all the cool notebooks are into, these days?_

 _MIXED._

 _COCKTAILS._

As I rummaged through the cupboards where Dad kept the cleaning supplies and other nifty bottles and cans, looking for the ones with the most warning labels, I smiled to myself. Tom might turn out to be just as backstabbing as Emma, or possibly even worse... But at least I knew that I could set him on fire, whenever I felt like it, without having to worry about the consequences.

…...

 **A/N:** I heartily recommend other Worm-fic writers that they try their hand at a Potter-verse crossover where Tom's diary has lengthy conversations with someone. Effectively, it's like writing a two-player PHO chapter without the trimmings.

Using "Incandis" as the incantation for Fiendfyre was, AFAIK, introduced in the story _Endgame_ by LeQuin. The author derived the word from Dis (the name of a Roman underworld) and the verb "incant". Thus, Incandis sounds like "incandescent", while it means something like "bring 'em hell".

Replies to reviews and comments:

 **Calibash:** Thanks! (Although, if you use a book as a blanket while you sleep, would that make it "covers"?)

 **Misplacer:** Fifty-seven percent of Voldemort's Horcruxes were made of metal. Sticking one of those in a microwave oven would definitely cause _some_ kind of explosion...

 **kurotanbo:** Agreed! I love the chatterbox version, too.

 **Lyzafae** , **Belial666:** When you started mentioning Sting, it took a double 'huh?' before realization dawned that you meant the pan-dimensional super-weapon. ("Eh? Hobbit swords? Pop singers? How would you destroy a Horcrux by turning on the radio?")

 **green:** That idea could provide some hilarious scenes:

 _"Hey, Dad? I've got a new... Pet? Kinda, sorta? In a way? Yeah, let's call him a pet. And, eh... I've been feeding him earthworms and centipedes and slugs, and stuff. But he's starting to look a bit sickly, and so... Huh? No, he's not a bird... Or a hedgehog. Well, he isn't prickly, but he's definitely a prick!_


	5. Glossary 15

**My Pen-Pal Voldemort**

 **Glossary 1*5**

Blood and entrails trickled down my face. Fat droplets fell from my chin, staining my hoodie with gory splatter patterns. Messy streaks had marred the lenses of my glasses, obscuring my vision. There was nothing wrong with my hearing, though, more's the pity - this meant I could still hear the mocking jeers and laughter of the other students.

"What is going on, over here?" Our biology teacher, Mrs. Weston, had finally noticed the disturbance.

"It was Taylor!" Emma said, eagerly throwing me under the proverbial bus. "We were just doing the assignment, dissecting that frog like we were supposed to... But then Taylor tried to mess with us! She wanted to ruin our work!"

"Kinda fitting, that she ended up making a mess of herself," Sophia sniggered.

Mrs. Weston turned to me with a disgruntled expression. "Well, Taylor? What do you have to say for yourself?"

I wiped at my face with the back of my hand. This did not do much to make me any cleaner - mostly, I just managed to smear the frog guts out into a more evenly distributed layer of goop. "Would it do me any good to point out that Sophia's hand is still resting on her ruler, from when she slammed her fist down on it?"

By the time the teacher had followed my pointing finger to see what I was talking about, Sophia had already put both her hands behind her back. She'd also schooled her features into a politely bland mask, instead of the triumphant sneer that she'd been leveling at me behind Mrs. Weston's back.

The teacher inspected the smoking gun - or, in this case, the viscera-stained ruler. "So? If Sophia had her hand on it, she might have been trying to clean it."

"She was using it as a catapult! That's why it's covered in bits of disemboweled frog!" I ground out through gritted teeth. "Emma cut open their specimen and put it on one end of the ruler, and Sophia slammed her fist down on the _other_ end!"

Mrs. Weston looked dubious. Emma giggled. "That's ridiculous! Why would we do something gross like that?"

"You aimed it at me!" I cried out, turning from Emma's innocent face to stare at the teacher. "Look! There's the eraser they used as a, a whatchamacallit, a _fulcrum!_ "

"That's a lie," Sophia growled. "That's Hebert's ruler. She used it to poke at our frog, trying to sabotage us. She's just so fu- ... So _darn_ clumsy, she ended up plastering frog crap all over herself."

She picked up the ruler by the cleanest corner, and flicked it at me. I flinched, fumbling the ruler as I tried to catch it. The blood-smeared length of neon purple plastic struck me on the chest and then landed on my desk with a clatter, adding a few more stains to my hoodie in the process.

I tore open the zipper on my pencil case with an angry tug, and dug out one of my few surviving pieces of school supplies, that Emma and her cronies hadn't ruined - yet.

" _This_ is my ruler!" I waved the green plastic rectangle in front of Mrs. Weston. I held up Sophia's bloody ruler in my other hand for comparison. "I've never, in my life, owned a ruler with the words 'BAD BITCH' carved into the plastic!"

"Yeah, no shit," Sophia muttered, while Mrs. Weston was momentarily distracted, as she questioned the other students about what they'd seen. "Your junk all ought to be marked 'WORST C-'"

When the teacher returned her attention to our blood-soaked standoff, Sophia quickly quieted, feigning innocence again. Behind Mrs. Weston's back, Sophia mouthed a word at me - something that might be charitably assumed to be: "Runt".

"You should know better than to lie about this, especially with so many witnesses in the room," said Mrs. Weston, glaring sternly at me with folded arms. "All the other students told me that Emma and Sophia's explanation is correct."

I glared back, fists clenched at my sides, as I struggled to breathe past the indignant bile quickly rising in the back of my throat.

"Now, since your prank ended up backfiring on yourself, I'm not inclined to punish you any further," Mrs. Weston droned on. "But consider yourself put on notice. One more disruption of class out of you, or another attack at your fellow classmates, and you won't like the consequences. Now, go to the bathroom and get cleaned up."

I crammed my pencil case and biology notes into my backpack, discovering in the process that my bag was coated with a sad little pile of gory amphibian remains. At least that answered the question of where my own partially-dissected frog had ended up. Sophia, or whoever was responsible for this last little twist, had even made the extra effort of unzipping the backpack, so the eviscerated frog carcass could get a proper chance to seep into all my textbooks and other supplies.

It was the little touches like this that showed how much they really cared.

I shouldered my backpack, long past worrying about whether I made the mess any worse, and stormed for the exit. The door almost whacked me in the face, when Sparky - the boy I was _supposed_ to have been doing the biology assignment with - shoved it open, wandering into the classroom after finally finishing his alleged "bathroom break".

Sparky's confused look turned to shock, when I rushed past him out the door, shoulder-checking him slightly on my way out.

The disgusted noise he made, when he noticed the frog guts that had rubbed off on his t-shirt as I brushed past him, was almost drowned out by the renewed sound of braying hyenas.

No, wait... Those were just cackling teenagers, taking great pleasure in the school pariah being put in her place, and probably some relief that they weren't the one on the lowermost rung of the social ladder. Easy mistake to make, confusing one type of savage animal for another.

My visit to the school toilet was a brief affair. It only took a few minutes before I gave up on getting the stains out of my hoodie - or my backpack, for that matter. Instead, I scrubbed the worst of the frog innards off my face and my hair, and went home. Mrs. Weston couldn't seriously have expected me to have brought a change of clothes in case of a sudden rain of frogs - disemboweled ones, at that. Besides, I _was_ going to the bathroom to clean up, like she'd told me to... At my house, admittedly, but if she expected me to stay at school, she should have been more specific.

The bus driver and other passengers gave me a few odd looks, but not many. We lived in Brockton Bay - this was almost certainly not the first time they'd witnessed someone walking around with blood stains on their clothes.

Then again, I'd seen my current expression in the mirror, during my brief pit stop in the school toilet. If my face still looked like that, even with less entrails on it, the other people might have decided not to say anything to me for fear of what reaction they might provoke - the crazy girl might punch them in the nose, or worse: Start weeping on their shoulder.

After a hot shower and putting on a fresh set of clothes, finally able to relax in the private sanctuary of my own home - still blissfully free from reverse burglars or other weird night-time visitors, since that fateful Friday night - I felt marginally better about myself. In fact, if it weren't for the pile of discarded clothes lying on the bathroom's tiled floor, smelling faintly of dead frog, I'd be very nearly peachy, or even spiffin'.

(As it turned out, my Mom had owned some dictionaries that covered slang words, as well - including some flowery phrases from the British vernacular. Dad probably hadn't noticed I'd borrowed the books from the boxes in the basement; or if he had, he certainly hadn't said anything about it... Gotten narky? Run his gob about it? Something like that, anyway.)

I prodded my ruined hoodie with my toe. Sadly, it failed to spontaneously turn clean and un-froggy on its own, as if by magic.

Huh... Magic. Now, there's a thought.

Scrubbing at my face and sniffling a little - for some reason, my cheeks were wet again, how did _that_ happen - I flounced off to my room.

Tom was lying where I'd left him, hidden under a pile of school textbooks. The scraps of paper stuck between his pages were exactly where I'd left them, the loose strand of hair I'd wedged underneath the notebook was still in place, as were the other ones that I'd planted between the thicker books on top of him - even the pattern of eraser crumbs I'd scattered around Tom's pile was undisturbed.

Theoretically, it wasn't impossible that Tom had been able to dismantle my arrangement, gone exploring, and then returned everything the way it was before I came home - or that someone else had broken in, and done something. Not impossible, just not very probable.

It was both reassuring to see that Tom hadn't gone walk-about in my absence, and vaguely disappointing that he hadn't. Maybe if I found a hiding place for him that wasn't quite so heavy, I'd be able to catch him shuffling around?

Still, I was pleased to note that the Mumble-Chorus hadn't returned to dump more of their weird garbage on my bedroom floor. Today had been rough enough, as it was - I really hadn't been looking forward to tripping over a twenty-four karat royal sceptre, or finding the Mona Lisa crammed in my waste paper basket, or whatever.

That reminded me... I really needed to do something about the three pieces of loot I'd hidden in the basement. The whole weekend had gone by without a visit from the local law enforcement, which either meant that this hadn't been one of Sophia and Emma's schemes... Or their plan was more convoluted than I'd thought.

That was a problem for later, though. Right now, I had laundry to do, and scientific experiments to cackle over.

Excavating Tom from the pile of books, I grabbed a pen and started scribbling.

 _Hey, Tom? Quick question:_

 _You wouldn't happen to know any good methods for getting rid of blood stains, would you?_

Tom seemed to mull this over, for a while - or perhaps he'd been asleep, and he had to go through the notebook-y equivalent of a yawn and some stretches, before he felt sufficiently awake to answer. As I waited for him to reply, I realized that, if I hadn't poured a whole bottle of bleach on Tom, along with various other cleaning agents, I might have been able to clean my clothes the old-fashioned way.

Hah. Totally worth it.

At last, new words oozed their way into existence on Tom's pages.

 **Sounds like an eminently nail-shaped problem.**

 **Why not use your favorite new hammer?**

I grinned, hope and anticipation and excitement bubbling up in my chest. Still, I had to make sure that he meant what I thought he did, before I got started on the victory dance.

 _Not really in the mood for riddles, Tom..._

 _Elaborate, please?_

An odd squiggle blossomed on the page. Squinting at it, I thought I recognized the general shape of it from earlier conversations I'd had with Tom - it probably meant laughter, or a snort of sarcastic amusement, or something along those lines.

Not sure what he was giggling about, though... Did the word "elaborate" mean something rude, in Britain? Or maybe it was a wizard joke?

 **I'm not too fond of riddles, myself. Rest assured, it couldn't be simpler.**

 **If you place my book on top of these blood stains that seem to be troubling you, I'll take care of the rest.**

"Yes!" I leapt to my feet and ran back to the bathroom. On the way, I picked up the gore-stricken backpack I'd tossed aside by the foot of the stairs when I got home, earlier.

My hands trembled a little, as I put Tom down on top of my hoodie, with the notebook's back cover touching one of the largest stains in the fabric.

I'd halfway expected to hear a gross slurping noise, or maybe nothing at all - previously, whenever I'd tried dousing Tom with every halfway-dangerous liquid I could get hold of, he'd absorbed them in silence.

Instead, I ended up jumping a little when a dry rasping sound rang out, echoing eerily within the tiled bathroom walls.

It reminded me of childhood trips to the beach, when I'd played around in the sand and filled my palms with the coarse granules; then, I'd let the sand trickle back out between my fingers, cascading down to rejoin the vast, seemingly-endless mass of tiny silica particles.

Or maybe I was just being fanciful, thinking of beaches because I was sitting on my bathroom floor. Maybe if my parents had taken me on more trips to the Zoo when I was younger, Tom's weird new noise would have made me think of snake enclosures, with wicked huge Boa Constrictors slithering around. Did the extra noise mean that Tom had to exert more effort to absorb liquid that had dried into fabric, as opposed to having fresh fluids poured directly onto his pages?

The rasping noise stopped.

Slowly, I picked up the notebook. My mouth curved up in a smile, and I released a breath I hadn't even realized I'd been holding, when I saw my hoodie.

My nice, big hoodie, which still had plenty of stains left... But which also had a perfectly rectangular patch of gloriously clean fabric, roughly the same size as the notebook in my hands. Within that rectangle, there wasn't a single speck or smear of frog's blood left to be seen.

There may have been giggling. There may, possibly, have been loud whooping, and pumping of fists, and wiggling of butts (well, butt, singular) in a highly undignified celebratory dance.

However, regardless of what Tom might claim to have witnessed, there most certainly were _no_ incidents of anyone throwing any sentient notebooks in the air. Furthermore, if there _had_ been any such occurrences - which there _wasn't_ \- said notebook was definitely not inches away from a particularly unlucky fall, tumbling past fingers that may have failed to catch him, which would have resulted in said notebook discovering whether his one and only mortal weakness was, in fact, blue toilet water.

After jotting down a quick "thank you" note on Tom's pages, I set about rinsing the rest of the frog splatters out of my clothes, and my backpack. Even the blood-stained books I'd carried in my bag today were given the same treatment, with similarly satisfactory results.

After a little while, Tom's rasping noises grew less unsettling. Halfway through the clean-up process, I'd begun to find it oddly comforting.

I still didn't trust him, of course. Even though I was grateful for his help - and even more grateful that he never asked why I was covered in frog blood, in the first place - that appreciation didn't completely quell my unease.

For example, I might have been imagining things, but... After we'd finished cleaning up all the blood stains, the notebook did seem rather more... _Full_. As if there'd always been an subliminal air of hunger about it, which had now been sated... A little, at least.

Oh, Tom... If you turn out to be some sort of undead vampiric paperback monster-wizard, and you've got the ability to transform into a giant bat, and you've been knowingly withholding that information from me, all along... You and I are gonna be having _words_ , buster. Flight power testing means flight power testing!

…...

 **A/N:**  
Taylor's biology teacher is only mentioned once in canon, AFAIK, and then not even by name. "Weston" seemed like as good a moniker for a biology teacher as any, since it can give associations to western blots - or to Herbert West, Re-Animator.

 **Alehhandro:** Thank you! The Diary probably uses a bit of column A, a bit of column B... Although, Tom never seemed the sort to pay much attention to woolly flimflam like 'trust' and 'affection', so the physical act of writing is likely more significant.

 **Skyfish:** Doesn't Chevalier's power only apply to objects that are reasonably similar? So, he could fuse the Diary with other books, but not with (for example) a shield, or a truck, or a refrigerator.

Mind you, if Chevalier was able to fuse the Diary with, say, a tablet computer (similar in size, shape and function), that might give Tom a chance to go online... Oh, hello, Ms. Dragon! My, what a lovely server farm you have...

 **Astrobot:** Fair point. There's a small time skip between chapters 3 and 4, but I can add a paragraph explaining how Taylor went from "Oh no, mysterious regenerating notebooks are invading!" to "Drink your poison, Tom", if people think the change seems too jarring.

 **TacitSoliloquy:** You might enjoy chapter 7, then. (SPOILERS: There's probably going to be a guest appearance by VoldeDrunk.)

 **Misplacer:** If and when Tom gets a body, he'll just have to fortify it magically against deadly poisons.

LEET: Hey, dude! I heard you like Bleach, but what's your opinion on DBZ?

TOM: (drinks a swig of drain cleaner, sprinkles white powder from a box labeled with a skull-and-crossbones on a slice of toast)

TOM: Is that the same as DDT? If so, I'm in favour of it.

TOM: *crunch*


End file.
